last year by Schmidt, confirms the view upheld by Heimich Brugsch and
himself that Nubian was the language of Ethiopia in classical times and
even as early as Herodotus. Sohafer, who has already done so much for
the study of the records of Ethiopia, hopes to find in Nubian the key to
the pagan Meroitic cursive, the alphabet of which is still undeciphered.
The Nubian dialects must formerly have covered a much wider area than
they do at the present day, as is shown by river and place names in
classical writers ; they are now confined to the Nile valley between the
First and the Fourth Cataracts, with an outlying patch amongst the
negroes in the mountains of Kordofan. The energetic Ethiopians who
conquered Egypt were probably neither the Barabra of the Nile valley
nor the Nuba of the hills : perhaps their proper speech was another
language entirely, like the "Hamitic" of the Bega; and indeed there
seems little in the known names of their family and people that can as
yet be connected with Nubian.

A text published by Max Muller {Egyptological Researches, p. 22)
from Karnak makes it certain that Psammetichus II. (not I. as is there
erroneously stated) warred in Ethiopia, thus confirming both a statement
of Herodotus and the usual dating of the famous Greek inscription at
Abu Simbel.

The same scholar figures a scene of pole-climbing in the presence of
the God Min, of the age of Harnesses II., and sees in it a festival with
gymnastic contests and prizes for Nubians and other barbarians to attract
them for trading purposes and so explaining Hdt. II. 91. Egyptological
Researches, p. 34.

Graffito in unknown characters at Karnak, id. ib. p. 37.

Philology and Palaeography.

Spiegelberg is the author of a pamphlet describing the Egyptian
language and writing, Die Schrift und Sprache der alien Acgypten, in the
popular series Der Alte Orient.

Max Muller returns to the question of transcription and the Semitic
equivalents of Egyptian alphabetic signs. For he suggests t, for